Nancy Cruickshank could be described as one tough cookie. Not just because she launched an online publisher in the days before Internet Explorer existed. Or because she has worked closely with taskmasters including Liz Murdoch, the Barclay brothers and Andrew Neil. In the week Media Week interviews Cruickshank, she is at home suffering with pleurisy.
She is not being left at peace in her sickbed, however. The Handbag.com boss has just become managing director of the newly-created Hearst Digital Network, which includes the Handbag Group's properties and the websites of The National Magazine Company. This appointment follows NatMags' acquisition of the Handbag Group from the Barclay brothers' Press Holdings. So, needless to say, Cruickshank has been busy - and still is, from the sound of her mobile phone buzzing in the background during the telephone interview, despite her illness.
Good fit
The acquisition of Handbag seems a good fit for NatMags. Handbag.com, allaboutyou.com, getlippy.com and gomamatoday.com are designed to "advise, inspire and entertain" women and they offer synergies with NatMags' portfolio including Cosmopolitan, She and Good Housekeeping.
"What NatMags has acquired is a team of specialists with a proven track record of engaging with women in a compelling way," says Cruickshank. In her new role, she will have responsibility for both developing Handbag and rolling out a far more developed offering for NatMag's websites. Cosmopolitan.co.uk, GoodHousekeeping.co.uk and CountryLiving.co.uk relaunched last month and the rest will follow.
She explains: "We will be rolling out all these magazine sites in a really complementary way." A website editor will be appointed for each site and, Cruickshank insists, they will not simply be places where magazine content is archived.
NatMags will now have "the complete waterfront" of advertising opportunities to women, she says. Certainly the publisher is gearing up to achieve this end digitally. As well as acquiring Handbag, in March it bought consumer health website Netdoctor. With these acquisitions and NatMags' sites just now becoming something more than merely a subscription driver, is it possible the publisher is arriving at the digital party a little late?
"Obviously I'm going to say absolutely not," Cruickshank says. "The important thing to take away from this deal is that we are now talking to one in two women in the country. It brings some fabulous household brands to us and fast tracks NatMags into digital investment."
She is now looking forward to working closely with chief executive Duncan Edwards and managing director Jessica Burley, an experience she believes will be very different to working for the Barclay brothers - who, by the way, she has nothing but good things to say about.
"Working at Press Holdings was a very autonomous, independent environment. Handbag Group Ltd was an opportunistic investment that paid off very well for the Barclay brothers. They didn't see huge synergies, but they took advantage of a fast growing market.
"Strategically, it's much more important to NatMags and I will be having much more interaction with Duncan Edwards and Jessica Burley. I want Duncan to have more of a hand in the business."
Global enterprise
Of course, one thing of note about the creation of the Hearst Digital Network is the taking of the name of the US parent company, rather than the UK operating company, NatMags. Cruickshank points out that the role of the network is a naturally global enterprise - NatMags has collaborations with publishers ACP and Rodale and is a shareholder in distributor COMAG, and this goes some way to explain the company's title. Aside from this, Handbag.com in the Press Holdings era already had aspirations to launch in the US, as Media Week revealed in June, and this is still on the table for Cruickshank.
But before tackling international markets, she has more basic issues to deal with, like the shortage of talented digital recruits, something affecting media owners and agencies alike. "One of the biggest challenges of the past year has been finding the right people," she admits.
When it comes to establishing a digital operation, however, Cruickshank has the credentials. She set up Conde Nast Online in 1995, before Yahoo! was even in the UK, followed by her own property dotcom Smove.com. Former Telegraph managing director Hugo Drayton, part of the group that hired her for Handbag.com, describes her as "energetic, forceful and passionate". Stephen Quinn, publishing director of Vogue, gave Cruickshank her first break and says she was "enterprising, enthusiastic, would take the initiative, but with a hint of impatience".
"Nancy was always in a hurry," he notes. But it's this impatience Quinn believes is Cruickshank's drive to succeed. With this latest step up into a wider digital role, she still seems to be in a hurry CV
2006 Managing director
Hearst Digital Network
2001 Managing director
Handbag.com 2000 CEO, Smove.com
1998 Managing director BSkyB's (.tv), the technology channel
1995 Commercial director Conde Nast Online 1994 Ad sales manager The World of Interiors, Conde Nast
1993 Research and marketing manager, Vogue, Conde Nast.
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